Assange - foreign office threaten to arrest him

[Empusa]

Article here

They are talking about revoking the Ecuadorian embassy's diplomatic immunity in order to enter the embassy.

Wonder if they will actually do so?

According to Wikipedia (sorry, on phone - but the articles have citations), under Swedish Law, extradition and a second round of questioning is appropriate at this point, and the UK High Court had found that the stage of the Swedish investigation is similar to being charged in the UK.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assange_v_The_Swedish_Prosecution_Authority#section_1

DoE - Helena Kennedy suggested some time ago that Sweden could make such assurances. Quote from Radio 4 "In international law, a country to which a person is surrendered should only deal with him on the offences for which he has been surrendered and, at the moment it's finished, he should be allowed to exit that country."

If Sweden could provide such an undertaking, it was likely Ecuador would be happy to let Mr Assange proceed there, she added.

Re the charges themselves, they are:
Holding a complainant down with his body weight in a sexual manner
Penetration without a condom when consent was conditional on condom use
Penetration without a condom when complainant 2 was sleeping
Pressing erect penis against complainant.

I think only the second of those might not be a crime under UK law.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Assange#section_7

Would be happy for someone on a computer to post non-wiki links!

Sarah, do you believe it would be unreasonable for the US to seek to prosecute Assange full stop?

I remember seeing something about US/Ecuador over the whole EU/US banana row so imagine bananas are involved oil naturally features and other agricultural profits.

DoE - No, for the most part I'm just interested in this situation and for various distractions reasons have not followed it in as much depth as I generally would follow news stories that I am interested in so am trying to understand a few things by the backdoor. I do think the US are guilty of some terrible abuses of power and of course we all know about Julian Assange but how many people in the UK or the US could name Bradley Manning? If JA is sent to the US I do genuinely believe that he could still (perhaps but for all the publicity he has generated over the last few years) be in jail having not been sent to trail 3 years from now.

Yeah, Bananas and canned fish seem pretty big! US is around 35% of their export market.

I agree the US has made some questionable extradition requests, but I do think Assange as a professional provocateur with a decent level of legal knowledge and access to funds for top lawyers is a different kettle of fish to a teenage hacker with Asperger's Syndrome who lives with his mum. I take your point that him being in jail without trial for three years would be unacceptable but ultimately if there is evidence that he has broken US law, it isn't unreasonable that he is tried there.

Thanks Novack & Doctorine. I see the dilemma now.

So basically it's a god awful mess.

Oh and don't forget he is already a convicted hacker.

Did he break US laws in the US?

Assange's defence is full of holes. Sweden is a legitimate, democratic state that adheres to the rule of law. He's no more reason to fear extradition from Sweden than from the UK - the whole 'ooh, poor me, my life is in danger' schtick is clearly nonsense and just a ploy to avoid facing justice.

I do hope the security services are watching every exit from the embassy very carefully and have issued an alert to all ports so as soon as he pokes his nose out of the embassy he can be arrested and held to face due judicial process. It'd be soooo embarrassing if he managed to sneak out of the back door and onto a cargo ship in Felixstowe or a yacht in some sleepy Devon harbour...

Agree with edam.

(am I allowed to smirk about edam's first line referring to "full of holes"?)

I hope he has to pay costs for all that court time in the UK.

Hester,I'm a bit hazy about jurisdictions here but it may be because wiki leaks is accessible in the US that there is an issue or it may be that some of wiki leaks (paid?) sources are US citizens (wasn't a US army officer prosecuted for supplying information). I believe espionage has been raised as a possible charge.

Again, since there is currently no extradition request, there is no an official position on what if anything he might be charged with in the US.

A cost order of £19k was made against JA.

No not unreasonable DoE

I am getting the feeling that there is something that I am missing about why the US have not made an extradition request. They are clearly investigating and pulling together evidence. I'm not being particularly conspiracy theorist - I assume it is simply some kind of legal process requirement. But there is a reason why Sweden are pushing to extradite without laying charges when they could question JA in the UK and routinely do travel to question suspects in such situations; there is a reason why the UK is so irate about the situation that they have spectacularly screwed up the situation (and potentially created tensions with the South American league which we can hardly afford given pre-existing tensions with Argentina) by threatening to withdraw diplomatic protection from the Embassy. Whatever I think about Assange (I genuinely do not know - this probably depends upon the findings of a Swedish jury in due course if they have juries in Sweden) I am quietly impressed with Ecuador.

Hester - I believe not. Nor did the UK aspergers guy, nor did Kim Dotcom. Does not seem to matter.

I think he should be extradited to Sweden to face the charges.

I am very uncomfortable about the move towards the US, and it is only the US, being facilitated to pursue and extradite people who are citizens and residents of another country, have not broken the law in that country and have not broken US law in the US. They are not trying to implement and enforce international laws, they are trying to exert global jurisdiction. If they continue and succeed, nothing good will come of it.

The UK guy did break the US law. He accessed a US computer system that was based in the US.

It should matter, Sarah. Are you aware of US laws? Should you be bound by US law while living in the UK? Do you get to influence US law by casting your vote?

Do you see te US handing citizens over to China, India or the UK if they hack a network based in one of those countries, Novak?

If someone is intelligent enough to hack into a computer that has a front page saying US DoD or such like, ip. address is US then he should know that accessing it was a crime which it also is if he had tried the same on a UK System

Sarah, did you see my post above which stated that the UK high court was satisfied that the case had reached a point in the Swedish system that would be equivalent in our system to having charged Assange?

That's not what I'm saying Hester. I'm saying it does not seem to matter to the courts. I'm undecided. Cyber type crimes are so complicated that it is essentially possible to breach a US law whilst not in the US but in such a way that it makes US laws meaningless unless they can be enforced in other nations.

No, apologies DoE - I missed that. Why don't they actually charge him then? Also, the Guardian is reporting that a former Stockholm chief prosecuter is saying that the extradition request is disporportionate and unprofessional and Assange could easily be questioned in the UK. If Sweden is already at a stage equivalent to the UK charging stage (which suggests that the questioning is merely a formality) his comments would seem naive (which seems unlikely).

I suppose it is simply that their procedures might be different to ours eg a second round of questioning might be standard before they make a charge BUT the standard of "proof" to get to the second round of questioning (which they want to do under arrest) is similar to what the UK would require for charging someone. That seems to be the opinion of the UK high court, anyhow.